There's a cameo in this film that's quite brief—I think this person is on screen for about two seconds—but acts as a perfect punchline and solution to a plot puzzle. Great cameo. Now that I type this out, though, there was also space for a cameo by Cameo; a missed opportunity.
Possibly the best line in the film is "Welcome to, and sorry about, Hell." Really captures the handoff from one generation to another.
Adding to the growing list of "stock characters Leonard likes": the secretly corrupt or hypocritical authority figure who talks the talk well enough that for a couple of scenes you think they might be for real; e.g. Principal Lodha in this movie.
Side note: it seems a lot easier to get Brad Pitt to be in your movie if you can promise his character will be quickly killed off. (See also: Deadpool 2). Sure, it makes sense, but it seems more brutal with Pitt than with other big-name actors. Jeff Goldblum was only in a couple scenes of Thor: Ragnarok, but he accomplished this by stepping offstage for most of the movie and having a long lunch.
Side note #2: Beth, Loretta's publisher, goes way beyond what any of my publishers would ever do for me, and beyond even what I'd imagine Nora Roberts' publisher doing for her. In fact, when I saw a trailer for this movie a while ago, I assumed Beth was Loretta's wife, based on her determination to find her and rescue her. This lead to some intense expectation shear in the first ten minutes of my viewing.
I'd heard of the ceiling routine and remember reading some years ago that the exact mechanism used to film it was a closely kept Hollywood secret, but after seeing it, that seems like a cocktail of hogwash and flimflam. We watched the scene once, formed a hypothesis (they rotated the set and camera in sync), and went back and rewatched. We saw nothing inconsistent with our hypothesis, which we later confirmed through Wikipedia.
Not only that, this solution is telegraphed by an earlier scene where they tilt the set floor during a dance routine to simulate a ship's deck. Basically, this seems like a secret that couldn't have survived the invention of the VCR, or being a projectionist in 1951 and seeing the scene every night. Maybe Fred Astaire was right and it really was a more innocent age.
You know what? It was a more innocent age, because in most Fred Astaire movies, Astaire's dance partner is presented as his girlfriend or his wife, but in this movie Jane Powell is playing his sister. In the show-within-a-show they're billed as "Tom and Ellen Bowen," and the only reference to how weird this looks is one random joke. I'm sure it reads just fine in the screenplay, where the dance sequences are just [DANCE SEQUENCE GOES HERE], but the dance sequences in the finished product have Tom and Ellen Bowen enacting stereotypical pornographic scenarios like "I'm the king and you're the housemaid" and "we are literally a romantic couple." In fairness, royal weddings and incest do traditionally go together.
Apparently I'm supposed to review Shrek as a movie? It's bad. The concept is fun, there's some gags, it picks up near the end... But the main characters are annoying and the visuals are ugly. Shrek is the best-looking humanoid in this movie. To be fair, they bit off more than their 2001-era CGI teeth could chew. But when I picture this movie re-modeled with better CGI and rereleased with the same sound track, I don't want to watch that movie either. That hypothetical movie seems worse, because there is a certain charm to bad CGI and I'm impossible to please. That reminds me, I want to watch Lawnmower Man.
Actually, there's a joke I didn't get until just now! The fairy godmother is a crime boss... like the Godfather. I didn't notice because they don't hit you over the head with it like in Zootopia. So, good job, Shrek 2.
We will not be watching the other two Shrek movies, because that Tumblr post said they were terrible, but I admit a sick interest in knowing at what point they bring back "All Star" for the meme.
Hall of fame riff, when C. D. Bales can't drink from the wineglass and asks for a straw: "He did not expect that."
Fri Jul 01 2022 20:33 June Film Roundup:
In June, the theme was "wacky comedies." I am pushing for the theme for July to also be "wacky comedies," but running into some resistance. We may end up splitting the month, Solomon-style.
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